Once Recker pulled into the parking lot and parked his car, he sat there for a moment, reflecting on everything that was going on. His concentration was broken when he saw Haley approaching. Recker got out, and the two men stayed near the hood.
“Figured it would be better if I met you out here first instead of you coming in, then coming back out again to talk.”
“Yeah, probably shouldn’t do that too much,” Recker said. “They’ll get suspicious of all the breaks.”
“So how’d it go?”
Recker shrugged. “Um, well, the list of suspects is over two hundred.”
“We figured it wouldn’t be easy.”
“We tried to narrow it down a little, but it didn’t go so well.”
“So what’s going on now? Is Fierbach still working on it?”
“No. Fierbach gave me the brush off. He handed me off to… I actually don’t know what she was. Assistant, manager, I don’t know. Anyway, she seemed very helpful. She told me she’s going to bring more people in on it and keep working on it.”
“You think she actually will?” Haley asked.
“I don’t know. All we can do is take her at her word for now. Hope she does.”
“What do we do now?”
Recker looked off into the distance. “I don’t know. There’s not much we can do right now. Nothing except wait. Wait for us to find something, or wait for this person to make their move.”
“Either way, it’s not good.”
“No, it’s not. But it’s all we got right now.”
“Well, at least Nate should be getting here soon,” Haley said.
“Yeah. It’s something.”
Haley looked around. “What if we’re being watched right now?”
“What?”
“What if this person’s got eyes on us? Either a lookout, or a camera, something. That means he’d know we take Nate up.”
Recker looked at his partner and nodded. He then thought of Jones’ secret passage. “Not if he goes in through the laundromat.”
“You mean he acts like he’s got laundry, then we open the secret door and he goes in that way?”
“Yeah. I’d have to text him to tell him to pick up a few things along the way.”
“Might work.”
“That’ll lead to the second problem, though.”
“Which is?” Recker asked.
“Once he’s in that office, he’s gonna have to be dead quiet for a week. Because once he opens his mouth, this guy’s gonna know we got someone else in the office. Then the surprise goes right out the window.”
“In that case, I’d say we have two options. Nate’s either gotta suck it up and be quiet for a week, or we smash that device right now so he can’t hear anything again.”
“I dunno,” Haley said. “I still think that device can be useful at some point. It’s a pain in the ass right now, not talking freely and all, but I think we can still use it to our advantage.”
“I’m inclined to agree for now. We’ll just play it by ear from here on out.”
Recker then got out his phone and sent Thrower a message. “Hey, before you get here, stop for a laundry basket and put some clothes in there.”
“Should I ask why?” Thrower replied.
“Probably not.”
“Will do. Should be there in a few hours.”
“Great. When you get here, just text me and I’ll tell you what to do.”
“Got it.”
Recker and Haley walked through the parking lot and around the building to get back to the office. Once inside, Jones gave them a greeting.
“How did your meeting go?” Jones asked.
Recker pretended to sound angry. “It didn’t. Stupid bum stiffed me. Drove an hour to talk to this guy and he stood me up.”
“What was his reason?”
“Didn’t have one. Just said he couldn’t make it today. Things came up. Can you believe that? Things came up.”
“Perhaps he can meet tomorrow.”
“No, he said his schedule is full,” Recker said. “He said he might be able to meet again next week. Might. Anyway, how are things here?”
“Same as before. No changes.”
They all sat down, working on different computers, trying to find some kind of lead to tell them who they were dealing with. They stayed mostly quiet, other than a few odd remarks here or there, and the sounds of the letters on the keyboards being struck. They were all anxious about the arrival of Thrower, though.
Even Jones, who was initially against the idea, couldn’t deny that he’d feel better if Thrower was stuck to his hip twenty-four-seven for the next week. He just wanted this whole thing to be over with. Though he tried to put on a brave face, both Recker and Haley could see that the ordeal was weighing on him. Jones looked stressed. Of course, that tended to happen when someone threatened to kill you. Jones wasn’t really used to this sort of thing. People being after him specifically.
For Recker and Haley, they didn’t care as much about someone coming after them. They were kind of used to it. When someone started coming after the people they cared about, like Mia, Jones, and Tyrell, that’s when it affected them more. It was even worse when they didn’t know anything about the person. It was hard to fight a ghost.
Several more hours had passed, and the crew had worked straight through dinner. None of them were even hungry. But Recker had his burner phone on the desk, waiting for that moment when it lit up, saying that Thrower had arrived. Recker made sure he had the phone on silent, that way whoever was listening wouldn’t hear a strange phone, and think they were trying to get one over on him. They had to play everything close to the vest.
Finally, that moment arrived. It had just gotten dark out, which made it even better. It was always easier to slip in somewhere in the darkness. Once the phone vibrated, Recker eagerly snatched it. His partners stopped what they were doing and looked at him.
“I’m here.” Thrower said.
“Great. Just grab that basket and put some clothes in there, and head into the laundromat, just like you were a regular customer.”
“OK. Then what?”
“I’ll meet you there,” Recker said.
Recker then tapped Jones on the arm, then pointed over to the bookcase, wanting him to do his magic. Jones nodded and got up, walking over to the bookcase, with Recker right beside him. Jones grabbed the book off the shelf, then turned to the spot and entered the code. The bookshelf slid to the side. Recker shook his head, still not believing this had been there the entire time.
In any case, Recker went through the opening, then punched the code in at the door. Once it opened, he went down the steps. Jones and Haley remained in the office. When he got down to the first floor, Recker put the code in at the door that led into the laundromat office.
Recker stepped inside, a little cautiously at first, just to make sure that nobody else had gotten in there somehow. He then went over to the door and unlocked it. With the door open, Recker went into a short hallway that quickly led to another door, which led to the laundromat area.
It wasn’t an especially busy night, with just five or six people in there, though Recker couldn’t be sure if that was the normal or not. For all the years they’d been there, he could only recall actually stepping foot in the laundromat a handful of times. He scanned the room, and quickly noticed Thrower at the corner of one of the machines. They locked eyes, and Recker motioned for Thrower to come over to him. Thrower brought his basket with him.
“Hey, what’s with all this stuff?”
“Let’s go somewhere more private,” Recker answered.
He led Thrower back into the laundromat office. After Recker closed and locked the door again, he spoke more freely.
“With everything that’s happening, I didn’t want you to go up to the office the normal way, and possibly get spotted. Who knows whether we’re being watched or not?”
“But won’t they still know I’m here?” Thrower asked.
Recker shook his head. “No. That’s what the basket’s for. That way you seem like a normal customer.”
“You said ‘the normal way’. Is there another way to get to the office?”
Recker grinned. He then turned toward the door, which Thrower assumed was a broom closet or something. Recker hit the code on the door and it opened. Thrower leaned over, trying to see what was in there, though it was completely dark.
“What’s in there?”
Recker stuck his thumb out and motioned toward the ceiling. “Going up.”
“Really? Looks like we’re about to go into a medieval dungeon or something.”
Recker laughed. “Not quite. Secret passage to get up to the office.”
“Well that’s pretty cool. So now nobody will see me go up there. Nice.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Is that new?” Thrower asked.
“New to me. Anyway, before we go up there, I wanna tell you what we’re dealing with.”
“Thought you didn’t know.”
“Well, we still don’t. But there’s a listening device up there that we took out of a computer we confiscated. So we believe whoever’s behind this is listening to everything going on up there. So we’re basically just talking nonsense, letting him believe we’re not close to finding anything.”
“Isn’t that basically the truth?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Recker replied. “That also means that if we’re gonna keep you a secret, we’re also gonna have to keep you silent.”
Thrower smiled. “It’s all good, man. I prefer to be the strong, silent type, anyway.”
“Well, it doesn’t mean you have to be silent. Just your voice.”
“Kinda the same thing, isn’t it?”
“No. If we wanna say something that we don’t want to be heard, we just write it down the old-fashioned way.”
“Oh. Like I said, it’s all good. I prefer to let my actions do the talking for me, anyway.”
“And you might have to before this is all said and done.”
“Before we go up there, we don’t have any leads,” Recker said. “We’re trying a few things, but it’s all coming up empty. Nothing even promising. The one thing I did do this morning was go down to Maryland and visit with the NSA. They’re working on it too, but there’s no guarantee they’re going to find anything either.”
“Well, they probably got more resources than we do, right?”
“Yeah, that’s the only silver lining. Hopefully they’ll be able to pull something up, but like I said, there are no guarantees.”
“There never is,” Thrower said. “OK, so what exactly do you want me to do?”
“Just stick to David. One hundred percent of the time. No exceptions. If he leaves the office, you leave the office. If he goes to the car, you go to the car. No matter what happens to the rest of us, or where we go, or whether we’re in trouble, that’s not your concern. If the rest of us are caught up in some trap high above a pit of alligators, like some Batman episode from the 60s, you don’t come running to save us. You stay with him no matter what.”
Thrower nodded. “Understood. I’ll stick to him like glue. Not the cheap kind, either. We’re talking extra strength.”
Recker smiled. “That’s it.” The two of them shook hands. “Together, we’ll get David out of this.”
“Together.”